Sister Birgit Weiler

Sister Birgit Weiler was born in Duisburg, Germany, in 1958 and entered our Community in 1978. She has spent more than 20 years living and working in Peru. Sister Birgit shares, “In Peru, I first worked in Arequipa and then for several years in Lima in parishes in poor peri-urban areas. Every day was and is for many families today a struggle for survival.” In Lima, she taught at the Jesuit University Antonio Ruiz de Montoya. She then returned to Germany, where she wrote a thesis on social justice and the environment for her doctoral degree in intercultural theology at the Goethe-University in Frankfurt. Sister worked as a volunteer in the female prison in Frankfurt, mainly with women from Latin America. In 2012, she received the “Erwin Kräutler” award from the Catholic Faculty of the University in Salzburg, Austria. The award recognizes her studies and doctoral thesis on intercultural studies on creation and the cosmos vision of indigenous people in Peru. Today, Sister Birgit works from Lima, Peru, as a theological adviser on issues of environmental justice, helping to generate criteria to guide the position and action of the Church in socio-environmental conflicts, especially in mining communities.